Dark Age of Camelot dev bringing back Ultima IV as Ultima Forever

Free-to-play RPG revamp coming to PC and iPad.

If the eight virtues of Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility mean anything to you, then today's announcement that BioWare is launching a revamped version of Ultima IV probably means something to you as well.

Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar promises to be a "lovingly restored" version of the 1985 original that will be free to play on the PC and iPad, with cross-platform support allowing for cooperative play between the two platforms. Players will take over for a fighter or a mage on a quest retold with what the press release calls "trademark BioWare storytelling." We suppose this means a lot of dialogue choices, most of which lead to the same point via a slightly different route.

Development is being handled by BioWare Mythic, the team behind Dark Age of Camelot, but EA's Paul Barnett told Massively the game is not an MMO. He compared the title to single-player and small-group RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age, instead. As for monetization, the team plans to primarily sell vanity items like "golden galleons" and "bigger hot air balloons" to make up for giving away the basic game. "We don't keep poking you for cash; we just leave you alone," he said, no doubt to the relief of many.

If they actually make the game as hard as Ultima IV no one in this day and age will play it (or they will all cheat with walkthroughs). Other than maybe Bard's Tale that was the hardest computer game I ever played.

I am just so excited about this game I want to ITALICIZE THE ENTIRE SITE!

I've never played Ultima IV but I can say that when I was a youngster and saw Ultima III on the C64 I was completely blown away. I begged my parents for a computer and bought that game. That game was probably the single greatest reason that I have a career in IT and I've been hooked on technology ever since.

If they actually make the game as hard as Ultima IV no one in this day and age will play it (or they will all cheat with walkthroughs). Other than maybe Bard's Tale that was the hardest computer game I ever played.

I hope they do play it. But you're right, that was a hard game. I played it on my Apple IIe (I think). Even then, I know I would have used a walkthough (if it existed) to get past some parts. As it was, I did the next best thing -- got hints from friends who had finished it.

Those were the days -- back before the internets made IRL friends unnecessary.

Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar promises to be a "lovingly restored" version of the 1985 original that will be free to play on the PC and iPad, with cross-platform support allowing for cooperative play between the two platforms

Hopefully they can make it in such a way that PC players won't hate playing with iPad players because of control issues.

I am just so excited about this game I want to ITALICIZE THE ENTIRE SITE!

If it's not worth italicizing the entire internet for, I'm not interested.

Well, yeah I am.

Faramir wrote:

If they actually make the game as hard as Ultima IV no one in this day and age will play it (or they will all cheat with walkthroughs). Other than maybe Bard's Tale that was the hardest computer game I ever played.

If they actually make the game as hard as Ultima IV no one in this day and age will play it (or they will all cheat with walkthroughs). Other than maybe Bard's Tale that was the hardest computer game I ever played.

I know I'll play it. I loved that game, and I remember exactly how to beat it too!

Always amazing. Although I've no idea how this works, shouldn't the game be 16bit? Ok there's some limited emulation of 16bit Windows on 64bit Windows for installers, but the whole game? Before my time I fear the whole thing.

Always amazing. Although I've no idea how this works, shouldn't the game be 16bit? Ok there's some limited emulation of 16bit Windows on 64bit Windows for installers, but the whole game? Before my time I fear the whole thing.

Always amazing. Although I've no idea how this works, shouldn't the game be 16bit? Ok there's some limited emulation of 16bit Windows on 64bit Windows for installers, but the whole game? Before my time I fear the whole thing.

I didn't find Ultima IV THAT hard, I did have a bit of an issue with Ultima V but that was my own damn fault.I had a page of notes, on both sides, about all the stuff I had to remember. I was down to the killing the last <boss whatever> and could not summon him because I had the name wrong. I went through the entire continent trying to find it again.

About a year later I re-read my notes and realized that because of my chicken scratchings and overwriting that I miss read the name. It was Nosfentor not Nostentor. After that the rest was easy. But I loved those games.

As for Bards Tale there was this room that spawned a ton of dragons I think. I farmed that puppy to become an archmage. Those were the days.

I'm still hoping for the Stygian Abyss to get the GUI update treatment.

THIS!

I tried and I tried to play the Ultima Underworlds games, but I just couldn't get past the postage-stamp-sized 3d window and interface. If they remade those games with a modern engine, I'd be all over it. Not like "EA presents it as a new @ $60" all-over-it...but a humble $15 all-over-it or so.

Plus, while IV really helped change the Ultima game series for the better, I have the fondest memories of VI ... no more country-side maps vs. city maps junk...everything just seemless. And, VI focused more on adventure than RPG ... it was more RPG-lite. And the stuff you could do in that game was amazing. I played it for well over 5 years before I realized you could get the glass-blower to make you more glass swords. (I was playing it on an 8088 on turbo going 8mhz with shitty CGA graphics ... it literally took 1 minute for a combat hit to register. Combats would take an hour or so. As time-consuming as it was, it was just like playing a real table-top RPG! LOL)

Always amazing. Although I've no idea how this works, shouldn't the game be 16bit? Ok there's some limited emulation of 16bit Windows on 64bit Windows for installers, but the whole game? Before my time I fear the whole thing.

I'm not sure I understand the difficulty complaints about Ultima 4 or The Bard's Tale. The worst thing was just dealing with moving one character at a time through the tight dungeon rooms when only one character can move, or when a room full of Balrogs behind walls put most of your characters to sleep. Also, graph paper was your friend, especially for secret triggers to blocked rooms.Name? Job? Health? Join? If I could have hot-keyed those...I also spent a lot of time asking everybody in existence about whatever items, runes, mantras, shrines, virtues that I could think of. I don't know how that would translate to modern gaming. Although... thinking about a world filled with wanna-be Avatars harassing every NPC repeatedly does sound hilarious. Too bad it's not an MMO. You could have a race situation and reset the world every time someone reached the Codex.

I am just so excited about this game I want to ITALICIZE THE ENTIRE SITE!

I've never played Ultima IV but I can say that when I was a youngster and saw Ultima III on the C64 I was completely blown away. I begged my parents for a computer and bought that game. That game was probably the single greatest reason that I have a career in IT and I've been hooked on technology ever since.

LOL... I bought Ultima III at the same time as I bought my Amiga 500 back in the day, and I still have it (the game, not the Amiga).

Always amazing. Although I've no idea how this works, shouldn't the game be 16bit? Ok there's some limited emulation of 16bit Windows on 64bit Windows for installers, but the whole game? Before my time I fear the whole thing.

It ships with DosBox.

The nice thing about DosBox is that it emulates the entire environment, so you can run old x86 DOS games on non x86 systems. I've been playing the original Wasteland on my Asus Transformer and having quite a bit of fun.

Also, Windows didn't really become popular (or practical) for game development until Win95, so earlier PC games were almost all DOS, not Windows.

As for Bards Tale there was this room that spawned a ton of dragons I think. I farmed that puppy to become an archmage. Those were the days.

IIRC they were Berserkers, four ranks with each rank containing 99 monsters. Having multiple characters with -10 AC in the front four spots while everyone else (and possibly some of those front four) casting the level 4 (I think) sorcerer spell Mangar's Mind Blade (MIBL) made it easy to farm.

No, I didn't play The Bard's Tale that much when I was younger. Why do you ask?

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.